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Ep 37. Sophia Jowett – influencing the future of sport

14th February 2019 by tammyparlour Leave a Comment

Episode 37 in an interview with professor of sport and exercise psychology at Loughborough University, Sophia Jowett. Sophia also worked as a consultant for the Greek Olympic team in Athens 2004.

Over the past twenty years she has been a leader in her field, helping us to understand the intricacies of the interpersonal relationships in sport.

In this interview she gives us an insight into her studies, her motivations, what she wants her research to achieve and in doing so reminds us of the significant role the coach-athlete relationship plays for performance success.

Find out more about Sophia and her research here.

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THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, WE CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

TX: 3.2.19 – Ep 36. Sophia Jowett

HOST: TAMMY PARLOUR

T: Welcome to a Question of Performance. I’m Tammy Parlour and in this series I’ll be talking with leading figures from sport and business about what improves, limits and drives performance. Join me for 20 minutes of discussion twice a month to hear a range of views on what it means to be successful, how to cope with failure and what people have learnt along the way.

[Music 00:23-00:30]

This morning I’m with Sophia Jowett. Sophia is Professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology at Loughborough University. She also worked as a consultant for the Greek Olympic team in Athens in 2004. Over the past 20 years, she’s been a leader in her field, helping us to understand the intricacies of the interpersonal relationships in sport.

In this interview, she gives us an insight into her studies, her motivations, what she wants her research to achieve and, in doing so, she reminds us of the significant role the coach/athlete relationship plays for performance success.

I started by asking her to tell us what led her to sport in the first place.

SJ: Tammy, thanks very much for having me. What led me to sport? Okay. That will go back to my early days. I come from a very sporty family. My father represented Greece in the long jump in two Olympic games and my mum worked in the Hellenic Olympic Committee. So, inevitably, I breathed and ate and slept sport. So, it was inevitable that I would find myself in sport.

I ended up, at the age of about 11 or 12, making a decision to go into athletics, like my dad, as my brother was playing football. Over about 10 years, I had the opportunity to be coached by wonderful coaches, but also some that I, kind of, found difficult to work with. I think the impetus of the work that I’m doing today is, really, the experiences that I accumulated, as I was a young athlete working with different people.

TP: That’s fascinating. For those people, who are listening, who don’t know, could you describe what you are currently doing at Loughborough?

SJ: Yes, of course. So, for the past, nearly 20 years (if we also count the work that I did as a PhD student back at the University of Exeter) my work revolves around trying to understand the complex nature, the interpersonal dynamics between coach and athlete. I’m very much interested in the intricacies of that particular relationship, how coaches and athletes connect, how they relate and how this unique partnership that they often develop leads them to extraordinary success.

TP: You’ve sort of alluded to it a little bit, but what is it that motivates you to that? Is it remembering that time when you were 11? Is that what’s pushed you on? What motivates you?

SJ: Well, what motivated me, originally, was that there was nothing in the literature around relationships and most of the interpersonal dynamics between coaches and athletes were addressed, explained and understood through coach leadership models. For me, when I was reading, I appreciated that you cannot really capture the intricacies that exist between coaches and athletes by just looking at the coach and what coaches do to influence the athlete and their team’s performance and success.

The athletes, as well, influence the coaches in what they do. So, there is a reciprocity within that partnership or the interpersonal dynamics between those people that were not captured through the literature that existed, the research that existed.

So, my experience is coupled with the fact that there was very little, or indeed, nothing when I started, and this motivated me to explore this further. Of course, as I went into it, I was just fascinated by the things that coaches and athletes were telling me through the interviews that we conducted and the early research that we did. I felt very strongly that there is something quite unique in the way that coaches and athletes operate and relate.

TP: If you look back on the research that you’ve done, what do you feel is the most significant? Significant could mean anything, to the outside world, to you?

SJ: To me at this point in time, what is significant, is that we have captured what we think is the quality of the relationship. When we talk about relationships, I’m sure you may have a different definition, others may have a different definition. Therefore, I think, now we have captured the points of views of many different coaches and athletes in a model that is multi-dimensional and really helps us understand a very complex phenomenon.

So, I can tell you with some degree of confidence and through the research that we have done over the past 20 years, what ‘relationship’ is, and this has not been through my efforts alone, it’s the efforts of the coaches that have participated, the coaches and athletes who have participated in our research, and they have told us what they think it is. We have organised all that knowledge in a way that everybody can now know and understand what that relationship is.

TP: When I was studying, I did a masters in strength and conditioning and your research was used on that course. I was struck by how relevant and accessible your research felt. You shape the coaches of the future and, I suppose, I’m interested to know, do you feel that connection to the coaches of today? Do you feel that you do have an impact on the future of sport?

SJ: I certainly feel… I don’t want to sound…. I want to be modest in my response. I really, certainly feel that the research that we have done has put the relationship on the sport map and people now more freely, and more clearly understand that the relationship is important. Like leadership, relationships and communication are important aspects for effective coaching. So, I certainly feel connected with the coaches.

I want and my mission is, to help coaches understand that the relationship is a vehicle, it’s a medium, it’s a platform from which they can really bring about change and significant success for themselves and their athletes and the teams that they work with. They really need to… If they haven’t used or capitalised this notion of relationship within their coaching, I think they’re missing a trick and I really want them to know and understand that it is important to bring that into their practices and connect with their athletes.

Because athletes… When we talk about relationships, we talk about these two people working together towards one direction. Coaches cannot do it alone, they need the support and the commitment of their athletes. Therefore, these two people, if they work together, they can really do extraordinary things. Whilst, if they work alone or separately, I don’t think they can bring about the change that they could have done otherwise.

TP: I imagine when you’re doing your research, getting it published, all that sort of stuff, there’s lots of different stages to that: there’s the first, sort of, coming together with the idea; there’s the going out and doing interviews or whatever it is; there’s the actual writing it up, presenting it etcetera. Do you have a part of that, that you get the most buzz from?

SJ: Yes. Yeah, good question. I really enjoy the research bit, sitting down and designing a research.

TP: What is it about it that you get the buzz from, what about that?

SJ: It’s kind of thinking, all right, how can we make a difference and what is the research question that we need to address?

TP: So, sort of, drilling it down? Yeah.

SJ: Yes, yes. It’s just, sitting down and thinking, brainstorming ideas. What really makes me motivated when it comes to designing a research or the next research project is, how can I help coaches? How can I help athletes? How can I help sport? How can I help better performances, through the little line of research that I’m interested in? This has driven me, really. I want to do research that matters to the coaches, to the athletes, to the sport. I would like to think that my research is very practical and, if it is not, then I’m not that interested.

TP: Yes. Yes.

SJ: Or other people may not be interested [laughter].

TP: Over the past few years since the growth of the Me Too movement, there’s been various stories about abuse of power within coach and athlete relationships sometimes. Any thoughts on that side of things? So, sort of, the negative side?

SJ: Yeah. There is a dark side or negative side of relationships and there are coaches out there who we know are abusive and exploitative of their athletes and this is part of the world that we live in. It’s not something that we just observe in sport, we observe it in all domains of life. Going back to the mission, it’s just we need to educate coaches to be better coaches. Some coaches, unintentionally perhaps, create situations where the impact is rather negative for their athletes and for themselves.

So, if there is anything we can do, it’s to educate coaches to deliver coaching that is positive. You mentioned about power. In my eyes, because I don’t want to say that I do positive psychology, but I think this is what I strive particularly for. I see power as something that the coaches and athletes share. The power does not reside in the coach or in the athlete…

TP: That’s interesting.

SJ: …it is something that they can both share, and it’s for the greater good. So, as I said, if coaches feel that they have all the power, I think they’re probably more powerless than they can ever think, if you know what I mean. They don’t capitalise, they don’t utilise their athlete’s power. Athletes are as powerful as they are, and it is a partnership. At whatever performance level you look at it, the athletes are very much part of that development, of that trajectory that aims to improve performance. As I said, coaches cannot do it alone, they need their athletes. Athletes cannot do it alone, they need their coaches. It’s very much a combined effort.

TP: When you think about coaching, at the moment, in general, do you think there’s an area of the coach/athlete relationship that actually needs to be focused on a little bit more, that people need to understand more?

SJ: Well, I can talk a little bit about the projects we are doing, at the moment. So, I’m very interested in whether gender has got anything to do with coaching.

TP: Okay.

SJ: Okay? We are looking at how coaches, regardless of their gender, coach female and male teams. We’re focusing on teams, at the moment. We started that study, or this research which is a long-term research, from the point of view that there is not much research out there that looks at gender and coaching practises.

I started from the point of view that, through my observations, which are not scientific, they are ad hoc, and through some reading that I’ve done that is anecdotal from coaches, talking about their experiences coaching the female versus the male. I just starting thinking whether coaches are trying hard to coach the female athlete differently from the male, because they simply think that female athletes need different treatment.

I start from the point of view that I don’t think male and female athletes need different treatment, they need to be treated as athletes. What we need to really be sensitive of is the person that we coach, the person that we have in front of us. It’s not about the age, the gender, the experience, the culture, it’s just the athlete and their needs and how, as a coach, they’re there to support and develop that athlete. So, I started from that point of view.

Now, as I said, high profile coaches have come out and spoken about male and female athletes needing different ways of coaching. But I started from the point of view, that really, we don’t. So, we will just observe coaches coaching males and females and hopefully, we will find and identify any patterns in their coaching behaviours and whether, indeed, there are any differences in the ways they communicate, in the ways they behave, in the time that, perhaps, female athletes versus male athletes spend in skill development, or in playing games. So, it would be interesting to see what is happening. I have my own hunches that coaches stereotypically coach the female athletes differently, but I don’t think there is much need for it.

TP: Yes, that will be really interesting. When do you expect us to be able to read the findings of what you’re working on at the minute?

SJ: We have just started, so it will take at least a year before we can present the first set of results. Yeah, it will be exciting and I’m very excited about that.

Another project we are doing is dealing with issues around leadership and relationships. So, leadership and relationships are both very important for effective coaching. The constant is that coaches need to have extremely good knowledge of their sport, the tactical, the technical, the strategical aspects of their sport. But leadership and relationships are important to help coaches transfer that knowledge over to their athletes.

Now, leadership is very different from relationships, but often we confuse the two. So, we’d like to separate the two, but study them together and that’s what this second study is doing. But it’s more… I think, we are starting from a theoretical point of view. So, it will take us a little longer to see some practical recommendations from that research. It will be first theoretical and then we may be drawing some practical recommendations out from it.

TP: So, probably in about a year for that one as well, or a little bit longer?

SJ: Yeah. Yeah. I will say a little bit longer. But, yeah, yeah.

TP: Okay, we’ll look out for that one as well.

This podcast is all about performance and success and how different people view those things. What’s success for you?

SJ: Success. Success, for me, is having, the person, whether it is an athlete or a coach, seeing incremental improvements.

TP: Okay.

SJ: So, for me, it is important that you establish an environment within which both the coach and the athlete are happy, feel safe but, at the same time, they both feel accomplished and rewarded.

TP: That’s success for them. What’s success for you?

SJ: Oh, for me? Success for me. Oh, okay. Success for me.

TP: Is it being published? Is it having a lovely life?

SJ: Success for me is… more recently. Yes, yes. It has been, over the years, for me, what I wanted to do is, through my research, to create a niche for me, where perhaps my name is associated with the research that I do. Because in academia, it is important to find your domain, and I think I’ve found my domain. I was lucky enough to create a domain for myself and to be known for that domain, which is the coach/athlete relationship. But more recently, my focus has shifted and I’m very, very keen to get the word out [laughs], and to speak to as many coaches, to as many athletes as possible, about the research that we do, the knowledge that we have. I’m very keen to help these people do a better job and experience success, however they define it.

TP: So, to increase the audience to what you’re working on?

SJ: Yes. Yes. Yes. We need a captive audience to have more impact, more practical impact. I work very closely, more recently, with UK Sport, UK coaching within the UK, to really spread the word and make it known to everybody that they can make a difference by just focusing on that element.

TP: One question that just popped into my head, do you remember the first paper you got published?

SJ: Yes.

TP: Yes. How was that? The first time you were published, how did that feel? What was that like?

SJ: Yeah, that was back in 2000, that was my first paper and I was still a PhD student and I remember trying to publish a couple of papers at the same time. In fact, I got a lot of rejects from the journals and I was thinking, “they don’t understand my research. I’m just trying to put out something new.” I could see the resistance, people not really appreciating and understanding where I was coming from. Ironically, the first paper I published was ‘The Coach/Athlete Relationship in Married Couples‘ [laughs]. Subsequently, other papers followed. But I remember having a lot of disappointment before I published. When, of course, I published and I got that paper out, I felt very, very proud and I knew that I had something different, something new and something exciting to supply and to provide to our world.

TP: For those listening, who obviously can’t see Sophia, when I asked her about her first published article, she grinned from ear to ear, so I think it must have felt good.

SJ: Yeah, yeah. It was a good moment. It was a good moment.

TP: I’m just going to end up with some quick-fire questions.

What did you eat for breakfast?

SJ: Today?

TP: Today.

SJ: Okay. A croissant…

TP: A croissant.

SJ: … and a coffee.

TP: Favourite piece of kit?

SJ: Can I say my pair of jeans?

TP: Of course, you can.

Sporting hero?

SJ: Sporting hero. Does it have to be…

TP: It could be anyone. It could be your mum [laughs].

SJ: I’m thinking of Usain Bolt [laughs].

TP: Why?

SJ: Because he’s lightning [laughs].

TP: Most useless piece of advice that you’ve either received or given.

SJ: Okay. Yes. The one piece of advice that I found very difficult to implement myself, but I can see the reason why it is so important, is patience.

TP: Patience. Okay.

Greatest passion outside of sport?

SJ: Ooh, my daughters. I love them. Yes.

TP: How old are they?

SJ: One is 16 and one is 13.

TP: And last one, best performance enhancer?

SJ: Performance enhancer? For me, it will have to be coffee.

TP: Coffee.

SJ: Yeah.

TP: Do you drink a lot of it?

SJ: Yes [laughs].

TP: That’s brilliant. Thanks so much for talking with me today, Sophia.

SJ: You’re very welcome. Thank you very much.

[Music 22:22- 22:26]

TP: Thanks for listening. You can follow the conversation on Twitter, Facebook and also, don’t forget to subscribe online to aquestionofperformance.com .

[Music 22:35- 22:52]

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Ep26. Tamsin Greenway – the playmaker on and off the court

1st February 2018 by tammyparlour Leave a Comment

In episode 26 we talk with a netball superstar, Tamsin Greenway. As a former England international, a former England coach, a Sky Sports pundit and now Director of Wasps Netball, she has a unique insight into the whole sporting system.

We discuss the challenges and rewards of being an England player and then coach, how she is building Wasps Netball from the ground up, and the impact Sky Sports broadcasting is having on the sport.

Tamsin Greenway is a former England international netball player, former England coach and now Director of Wasps Netball. Greenway guided Wasps Netball to the Vitality Netball Superleague title in the club’s inaugural season – her third consecutive title after back-to-back victories with Surrey Storm.

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TX: 01.2.18 – Ep 26. Tamsin Greenway – the playmaker on and off the court

HOST: TAMMY PARLOUR

T: Welcome to a Question of Performance. I’m Tammy Parlour and in this series I’ll be talking with leading figures from sport and business about what improves, limits and drives performance. Join me for 20 minutes of discussion twice a month to hear a range of views and what it means to be successful, how to cope with failure and what people have learnt along the way.

TP: Today I’m talking with Tamsin Greenway. Now if you know anything about netball you’ll know who Tamsin is. She’s an absolute legend, a real superstar in the sport. I’ve met Tamsin on a few occasions now and I’m consistently struck by her drive. She has a genuine appetite to learn and to influence and a real ambition and determination to shape her sport. As a former England international, a former England coach, a Sky Sports pundit and now director of Wasps Netball, Tamsin also has a unique insight into the whole sporting system. We start the interview reflecting on her time on the court. I ask her has she always known she was good?

TG: Um, mm, yeah, no. I knew I was, I was always very sporty and netball was always my passion. At age ten I think I came home from my first ever session and got back to my mum and said, “I know what I’m gonna be now. I’m gonna be a netball player for England,” and she went, “Okay, we’ll see.” But it was kind of always something I wanted to do.

TP: What was it about that session?

TG: You know what? It’s bizarre because when I think back at it now and I always say to my mum, why the hell didn’t you put me into tennis or golf or something where I could have made some money or I could have retired rich. No, I love team sports so I played all sports anyway. First passion was football, ‘cause I was surrounded by boys. But I still remember that session. I remember the white board and us learning about the positions. I just loved being part of the team and I was a showy little goal attack that would shoot from anywhere. And I just, yeah, I guess I liked the whole social side of it as well and the fact that you could, yeah, you were playing with loads of other people. So I always knew netball was the way forward and I kind of got to an age at fifteen, sixteen where I knew I was probably better than others. I could hold the team together; I could make the team win. So yeah, I kind of knew I was there. I didn’t know whether I could make it all the way but I had a massive determination to give it a go.

TP: So much as changed in netball since you came onto the international stage, and I believe that was 2005.

TG: Yeah.

TP: From the kit to the audiences, Sky’s involvement. What change do you find most exciting?

TG: Just the engagement with youngsters I guess, just that passion. I came home and said I wanted for England. I had no idea what that meant or what it was or even if it was possible, whether it was a way of life. And I think now the players having the opportunity, the girls seeing that there’s a different way, and even not to the elite level, but just the whole club part, the social part, the fun element. I think there’s so much more talk about netball now. It used to be so isolated; it’s been so nice to bring lots of people into it from all different parts of life really, and I think that’s probably excited me the most that there’s so much interest in it now, and in women’s sport, that people talk about it a lot more.

TP: You said in an article that I read yesterday actually that after seven incredible seasons at Surrey… I’ll start this again. After seven incredible seasons at Surrey Storm, I feel now is the right time for me to take on a new challenge. I’m interested about what makes a right time. How do you know to stop something and go onto something else?

TG: I probably got quite stale with certain things. I’d done things for such a long time, I could go to Surrey Storm with my eyes closed, you know. I’d played there, I’d coached there, I knew the ins and outs of everything and I didn’t think I could take it any further. You know, we made five grand finals in seven seasons, we’d won back to back titles and I couldn’t push it any more. Like there was nothing more to give I guess and that’s I think for me, and I know that as a person that I’m very, once I get to that stage I know that I need to go and do something else and find something else to do, which it has its pros and cons I guess. But yeah, I felt I couldn’t give any more to it than I’d already given and it was fresh for someone else to take on.

TP: Well I’m particularly interested in your current challenge. You’re director of Wasps. What does that involve?

TG: Everything. When I first joined it was mad because Wasps took it on, who have been absolutely fantastic, but they knew very limited about netball. So I mean I was getting asked questions at the start about how sprung the court needed to be and the dimensions and stuff. That’s what Google’s for, guys. But yeah, it’s kind of moulded into coach, overseeing all the community programmes, overseeing all the junior academies, and then being a sounding board for everything else. We’re great ‘cause we have a PR team, we have a ticketing team, we have all the guys there that are very involved and love it, but yeah more sort of advice of what netball looks like and how it should move forward.

TP: Talk about the court, you have literally built this from the ground up. Daunting or just absolutely invigorating?

TG: I guess looking back at it, it was probably quite daunting. I remember taking it on thinking this is brilliant, it’s my dream job. I walked into a boardroom full of lots of important people and they sold me the dream and I did not play it cool. I put my head on the table and went, “This is my dream job, okay, I’m here.” Walked into it and then thought, oh God, we don’t have anything. We didn’t have anything. We didn’t have a team, we didn’t have the back room staff, we didn’t have anything. So kind of the enormity hit home about a month after taking on the gig. But it kind of all just fell into place. It was one big roller coaster really. Like I don’t think I’d have changed it. I’ve almost found this season harder because last season you were just thrown into it, dropped in at the deep end and it was like right, sink or swim. This season has probably been more difficult because I’ve actually now got to plan things and last year it was just get on there, get a team together, try and win, which we ended up doing which doesn’t happen very often.

TP: But now I imagine you feel like you need to win again and again and each time get that little bit…

TG: I was having this conversation about coaching the other day actually, because I don’t… the pressure never stops, it never changes. So we won and the grand final was amazing for about three hours afterwards, and we had a great night out. And the next morning I’m going, okay, what does the team look like next year. Who’s gonna sign other players? What are the other teams gonna look like? How are we gonna win it again? And I kind of get annoyed at myself for having that part of me because it would be really nice sometimes just to sit back and go, wow, look what we did, and instead it was, right, how are we gonna build, what next.

TP: You’re in charge of player recruitment. When you’re trying to build a team, what ingredients do you look for?

TG: It has to be the right mix, so that’s not only the performance side. The performance side to me is the easy bit. I’ve got a style of play, how I want to play netball, so I have an idea of the shooter, the goal attack, what they kind of mix, and that’s easy for me to spot. The culture side is probably the most important part of anything. A winning team has the best team environment and different mixes of personalities and people can really disrupt that quite quickly. So I’m all about what they’re gonna bring to the team as a person. And actually if you know my team we’re all kind of odd bods in a weird way, but they’ve all got the same sort of general outlook, morals, that kind of thing and that makes a huge difference especially when you’re under pressure.

TP: To be the best team though, you have to get the best out of all your people. Any tips?

TG: Honesty, and that’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve had from being a player and being coached by lots of different people. They’re the most difficult conversations to have and it’s probably the hardest thing that I found becoming a coach, that those chats are awful to have sometimes, but you’re talking to grown ups who, you know, who want to achieve and want to do something and actually there’s no point fobbing them off. So how honest you can be with people at the start from everything from how much they’re gonna play to what they’re bringing or even if it’s just difficult conversations about what’s going on in life, it’s really important that you can have those chats with people. They don’t always like what you say and they sometimes don’t always hear what you’re saying, but at least you give it a go.

TP: Do you think having been an athlete and then a coach gives you that edge?

TG: I think it’s given me a style of how I want to have my team. It wouldn’t work for everybody and that’s what I say about the culture’s really important, ‘cause actually that way is not the best way for everyone. I’ve had lots of coaches that their way to fire you up is to shout at you, to basically tell you you’re rubbish when you want to be better. I’ve also had coaches that have told you brilliant. Each way is different for people, but I think it’s at least given me an angle that I’ve gone, right, this is how I want to coach the players, and everyone can buy into that.

TP: You now, in your role now as a Director of Wasps, do you look back on that younger self, that athlete or that coach, and think what I was thinking then, you know, I had no clue. Or have you just…?

TG: Yeah, I was a terrible coach when I first started I think.

TP: Really?

TG: Oh God, I think back to that first year…

TP: What constitutes a terrible coach?

TG: Well, two parts of it. So the first part would be the performance side. We made the grand final that first year and I had a good team and we were probably favourites to win, and at half time we were level and we weren’t playing well, and I came in and just tore strips off everybody. I just shouted, ‘cause I was on court, I was angry and angst, and I wanted to do. I remember the team talk; there was not one bit of constructive tactical technical bit. It was basically played better and we went out and we went goal for goal for the whole goal and we lost in the last 30 seconds, and I was devastated. And I look back at it now and go, that was just awful. I didn’t know how to control my emotions. And player management side as well, there wasn’t that honesty there so there were players in there that perhaps, you know, that thought maybe they were gonna be playing and I hadn’t had that conversation ‘cause I just presumed they knew weren’t at that time. So it was a massive learning curve.

TP: You say you didn’t know how to control your emotions. How did you learn that? Was it just a case of realising what had happened and then just sort of saying, okay, I’ve just got to sort myself out?

TG: That took time and that was growing up. Having my daughter helped a lot. I remember the first final I lost having Jamie and she was handed to me straight after the game and it changed everything. It was, you know, I haven’t got three days to mope around and be upset about this ‘cause this little thing wants to play with the confetti on the court that was shot over the other team, you know, it’s that simple. I grew up and you learn to control your emotions. I don’t think you can change your younger self; I think you just grow into what you want to be. You can look back at it now and some of the things I did were stupid, and actually as a player on court I’m a bit Marmite because I’ve had those emotions, but I don’t think I would have been as good or been in as many successful teams or won as much stuff if I hadn’t been like that. So I don’t regret any of that stuff but I think now I can look at it a lot more open and not be as fussed as I was back then.

TP: We’ll talk about the challenges. What’s something you’re most proud of?

TG: I think the year I won the super league just as a coach, not as a player coach, that’s probably the proudest moment.

TP: And why was that bigger than being a player coach?

TG: Because on court I can influence, because I can still do, I can still be out there, I can still make a difference court. I think to actually not be there and still give over the same passion and the instruction and still actually have done it without having to have played. Not that I was, you know, I’m not saying I was the best player on the court ever and definitely wasn’t in this final by a country mile, but you can change a lot more on the court than off the court. You have to say the right things and be the right person so I was proudest of that.

TP: Much of women’s sport is going through a massive transformation at the moment. Part of the challenges about trying to understand how to communicate the value to the external world and sports and teams are trying to engage larger audiences and find sponsors and build partnerships. Are those challenges familiar to you too?

TG: Yeah, definitely. I think all the sports are going through the same transition and it’s great we’re getting more and more coverage and people are talking about it more, but I’ve kind of found that’s been going on for a quite a few years now and we’ve come to a halt again about how we actually start to engage and big things for me have been looking at how it’s very different to how probably men watch male sports. And, yeah, the big thing with netball is how we’re getting more people to come to the games and watch and some of us being a mother as well how we’re getting women to not feel guilty about doing that or give time and have time with their families to come along to games and actually do something that they enjoy as well. Yeah, I think there’s lots of different angles on it at the moment and I’m trying to explore different ways, because I think in netball we’ve got to a point where we’ve got a great audience but we now need to move it forward again, and I think we’re all sort of at that same point, well how do we do that.

TP: Move it forward as increase it that little bit more?

TG: Yeah, definitely. I think the participation’s always there. I don’t think that’s the issue. Women are playing sport, you know. Kids are getting access at school. Yes, we’d like to do more and we’d like to have more clubs and more stuff going on, I know all that. But the biggest thing for me is this transition from the participation to the elite; how are we getting women to watch sport. What are they interested in? What do they like doing? And, yeah, how do I get regular… If I didn’t have any access to netball as a kid in terms of watching it, I knew my club and that’s all I ever saw. If you’d had seen the elite game, how incredible that would have been. So it’s now trying to make that transition and go hang on, there’s some great sports happening all the time, there’s some great role models, come along and see it, you know, come along and do something different for the day and see if you enjoy it.

TP: I remember watching my first elite netball match and that was probably about five years ago. I grew up in America and netball wasn’t there at all, it was just not part of my experience at all, and I saw the first elite game on the TV, England v Jamaica I think it was, oh God, it was amazing. The athleticism, I was just absolutely captivated. How important has Sky’s involvement been do you think to the growth of netball?

TG: Huge. You can’t take that away. They’ve put it into the forefront, they’ve made people aware of it, they’ve jazzed up the game, they’ve shown it as an actual technical sport as well. I know when I do the analysis on Sky and we do the Sky Pads, the amount of feedback we get from that, people are like we’ve never had that input, we’ve never seen that part of it before and it was taken seriously. And I do quite a bit of work with Sky and actually, you know, Sky do so much for our sport and actually we’ve now got to stop necessarily going, oh the media don’t show enough. Yes of course we’d like more stuff, but Sky are doing a fantastic job. What I want to say now is actually let’s support that, let’s watch the games, let’s go online and see the clips and the highlights and see the analysis and actually give back to it and start supporting women supporting women, because I do genuinely think that the media have been a game changer for us and actually now we need to start repaying the favour if we want it to keep growing and growing and growing.

TP: Do you have a sense of how to tackle this challenge?

TG: I wish. No, I think culturally we are always gonna struggle ‘cause we’re different. I spent a lot of time in Australia and actually some of the stuff that doesn’t necessarily transfer just because culturally we’re very, very different, and I don’t always think that’s the answer. I think there are different ways of doing it. I’m still not sure we’re getting the message out to everybody and I’d like to see that. So for example, we’ll have schools come and watch. So a school will bring fifty kids to come and watch a game of netball and they absolutely love it, and they go home. What I want to see then is parent go, oh you really enjoyed that, cool, I’ll take you again another week. And I know what it’s like, I’m busy as a parent and there’s other things going on, so it’s how we try to change that and make sure they’re getting the message and actually starting to do something, whether it’s hockey, football, rugby, cricket, netball, whatever it is the sport they’re involved in, that you can have more impact. And, you know, that’s something that I hope I’ll be able to transfer to my daughter as well. But sport’s always been my passion so it’s now trying to find that way to engage other people that perhaps haven’t got into it or haven’t necessarily thought that that’s the mum-daughter thing that they’re gonna do. So I think there’s different messages to get out there and that’s something I’m trying to look into.

TP: You’re part of the Wasps family. Is that important to be part of or has that been significant being part of a bigger grouping? How does that…?

TG: Definitely. The brand has helped hugely, just by having a name and a sort of professional element to it, and that’s behind the scenes and then when you’re talking fan base. And I think it’s the future. I think it’s the way that sports are gonna go cross across into many different areas and angles, whatever that works, whether it’s a football team, a rugby team, a cricket team. I think that works for us as well because when you get an affiliation to a club over here, whether it be football or rugby or cricket, it does cross over, and the amount of interest we’ve had from men that bring their sons to the rugby game or come with their family that’s gone, oh my wife plays netball or my daughter’s just started at school, oh maybe we’ll come to a game as well. We’ve had so much of that. And the brand helps because it does, you know, having people like JLR on board, we wouldn’t have necessarily got our foot in the door if it hadn’t been for Wasps.

TP: What’s the biggest thing you’d like to see change over the next, I don’t know, five years around netball?

TG: I’d love the league to become semi-pro, you know, that’s a massive thing. It’s moving in that direction. We’ve got England players that are full time but that gap now between the England players and that layer underneath is still big, so I’d love there to be 150 to 200 women in this country that are semi-pro athletes for netball. How amazing would that be that they can still build a career but they can actually train properly and play properly?

TP: And what needs to happen to enable that?

TG: Like anything, increase in numbers and attendances at games, bigger sponsorship and more coverage, but they all, it’s like chicken egg, you know, what happens first. So we get the spectators in, the coverage will then come.

TP: You’ve been an elite athlete, which is very much focusing on the self, and then a coach focusing on the athletes and now director of Wasps Netball focusing on the team and the bigger sports. What’s next? NGB? Does Jo Adams need to watch her back?

TG: No, not yet. The business is not my forte. You know what? I constantly think like that. You know, I won’t coach for ever. The sport is more important to me than being involved in one thing. I love what I do at the moment and I’ll always be involved in netball. I want to help the sport. It’s always what I’ve been passionate about from day one and I’m not prepared to give up on it. So whatever that angle takes, you know, whatever pathway I go down next it’ll be to help, encourage the sport and to do what we’ve talked about, because I genuinely think it’s still a blank page and for most women’s sports I think they’re just at that edge where we could take it forward and it’s just about finding the right spark.

TP: It’s an exciting time.

TG: Yes.

TP: This pod cast is about performance, it’s about different people’s views on what success is. I mean you’ve touched on that throughout the whole conversation, but I just want to ask you more directly. What’s success for you personally?

TG: I think there’s always a goal, so the goal each year for success is to win or to achieve this target or that target. But I think, and especially this year, I took a bigger step back from that for success. You can’t win every single year. You can’t keep winning. It’s not what it works. So what is it? And I think the answer for me was the journey. Yes, we had a goal, we wanted to get there, but from this year I learnt that there were many different ways to go and wind, and actually some of those ways were really good fun. Some of them were awful, not gonna like, some of them were awful. But I think success for me now is much bigger than that ultimate end goal. It’s about the journey and what you’re on and that’s kind of how I feel. So everything, there isn’t ever an end goal because if you didn’t win this year there’s always something to do next year and there were always some other bits that I collected on the way that made it a bigger purpose, and that’s kind of how I feel about it. Not always after the grand final when I’ve lost, but I’m trying to see success now as a much bigger picture.

TP: I’m just gonna end up with some quick fire questions. What did you eat for breakfast?

TG: An apple. How boring is that?

TP: Sounds [unclear 00:20:44]. Favourite piece of kit.

TG: Favourite piece of kit, like playing kit?

TP: Any kit you want, however you want to define that.

TG: Favourite piece of kit is my first England dress.

TP: Sporting hero.

TG: Ooh, Roger Federer.

TP: Why?

TG: Because I think the way he’s evolved as a player I think is absolutely incredible, and look at him still going now.

TP: Most useless piece of advice you’ve been given or given to somebody else.

TG: That I need to be taller.

TP: Need to be taller.

TG: To play goal attack. Can you believe that I was given feedback on that? You need to be taller.

TP: Okay. Greatest passion outside of sport.

TG: Oh God. Oh, that’s really sad. Do I have one? Greatest passion outside of sport. You know what? It’s just family time, like hanging out with my daughter, like whatever she’s into, being passionate about that, which is princesses at the moment and unicorns.

TP: How lovely. Look at you. Best performance enhancer.

TG: Best performance enhancer. You know what? Sleep. Getting enough time to actually be able to train and do everything properly.

TP: Well it’s been brilliant talking to you, Tamsin, thank you very much.

TG: Thank you.

TP: Thanks for listening. You can follow the conversation on Twitter, Facebook and also don’t forget to subscribe online to aquestionofperformance.com

[End]

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Ep 19. Katie Richards – performance scientist on enabling children to develop as elite athletes

1st July 2017 by tammyparlour Leave a Comment

How can we support children to develop into elite athletes? In episode 19 we chat to Performance and Coaching Scientist, Katie Richards. We discuss the explosion in success of British Gymnastics, the issues facing young elite performers and how a supportive coaching framework can enable talented children to develop.

Katie Richards is a Chartered Scientist, BASES Sport & Exercise Scientist, Senior Lecturer Sport Psychology at St Mary’s University and is completing her PhD in the skill acquisition strategies utilised by high-performance coaches, and their psychological impacts.

She has worked in a range of sports including gymnastics, mixed martial arts, pistol shooting, synchronised swimming, golf & Paralympic sitting volleyball. She is most active within the discipline of women’s artistic gymnastics and was National Squad Coach in Aerobic Gymnastics 2007-2010. Currently she concentrates the majority of her time towards developing young performers (5-10 years) towards the elite performance pathway.

Visit Katie’s website here.

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TX: 01.7.17 – Ep 19. Katie Richards – performance scientist on enabling children to develop as elite athletes.

HOST: TAMMY PARLOUR

TP: Welcome to A Question of Performance. I’m Tammy Parlour and in this series I’ll be talking with leading figures from sport and business about what improves, limits and drives performance. Join me for 20 minutes of discussion twice a month to hear a range of views on what it means to be successful, how to cope with failure and what people have learnt along the way.

[Music]

TP: Today I’m talking with senior lecturer in sports psychology at St. Mary’s University, Katie Richards. Katie’s an ex-international gymnast who went on to become national squad coach. She continues to work with athletes across many different sports on their performance. This is what she’ll refer to in the interview when she talks about being a practitioner. What I particularly find interesting when talking to Katie is her insight into how coaching and how a supportive framework can enable young athletes to develop as performers. I first asked her though to talk about her continued involvement with gymnastics.

KR: I work mainly within the discipline of women’s artistic gymnastics, as a coach, a coach mentor, tutor. I sit currently on the the technical committee as one of the coach education reps and I also work for a local gymnastics club as their coach development officer. So I’m still involved quite quite a lot, yes, in gymnastics.

TP: As a former gymnast, what’s your opinion on the explosion and success in gymnastics and the the growing participation rates?

KR: It’s so exciting and it’s so great, you know it’s a really great time to be part of British gymnastics and you now how successful it has been. It’s gonna be down to a number of things. So, first of all, we have much more support now for gymnast and that support ranges from facilities, you know the amount of funding for facilities. We’ve also got the fact that we have been training and supporting our coaches more and putting more into that, so that the coaches are better equipped in terms of knowledge. They have the ability to actually access sport science and have contributed coming in with different expertise to support the coach in their process. And I think we, we now just see gymnastics in society for the difficult sport that it is and we give it the respect that it actually requires now. Whereas, before when it maybe wasn’t geting as much publicity, it it maybe just kind of wasn’t, wasn’t seen or thought about in the same way. So I definitely think we’ve got this combination of funding, coach education. We’ve got the fact that now gymnasts are making careers from gymnastics. So they’re they’re moving into this almost professional status of gymnastics. But they’re then going out and we’re retaining them, we’ve got people now like [unclear] set up their own gymnastics programme for children and for low level participation. So we’re retaining them in a way that they are becoming public figures. We see them on celebrity shows, so it, it it’s got more of a career path within it now and really it’s down to how creative they want to be within it. So I think the support from all angles and the structure of British gymnastics has really helped that, but it’s been a long journey; the development of the competitive programme to give structure to gymnasts and coaches has really now shown that we’ve been developing these gymnasts from the age of six or seven, now we’re seeing them at 19, 20; over the last kind of 13 years they’ve spent developing in our structure and it just really shows that making changes at the lower level, the younger level will eventually make the change at the senior level…it’s a very long winded answer.

TP: Sounds like it’s been a very deliberate process that gymnastics has has gone through. How do you grow an Amy Tinkler or Max Whitlock?

KR: Well, I definitely think it has to start young. Gymnastics is an early specialisation sport and although it’s very important that they have skills in different areas, like rowing and catching etc. ultimately there there needs to be a lot of specialisation quite early. I think can we grow them I think is is…Everybody has their own story; I mean you mentioned Amy Tinkler and Max Whitlock they both got very different stories so I wouldn’t say that there is one, one recipe or one method to do it but you’ve got the fact that they do need that support structure in terms of things like location of the gym club that they are training at in relation to where they live, so that, so that gymnastics can fit into their life. Making choices they have to make choices and sometimes those choices are going to be made by maybe parents and coaches quite early on about how much time they spend training, working with the schools to negotiate how they can continue with their studies and study effectively, but maybe not have to be there for as long as the school day is and whether there are alternatives for how they do that and making sure that the coaching structure is there. So it has to be collaboration, it’s not just one person behind any fantastic gymnast, like the ones you’ve just mentioned there. It’s it’s a team really, and I think just probably not losing sight of the fact that that is a little person to start with. They are a human and they are a person and they need to be part of the process and we need to keep perspective that we’re developing a person there as well as just trying to create a gymnast. If you listen to Amy Tinkler and Max Whitlock in their interviews, you know, they are very well-rounded human beings and that’s all credit to the team that’s been behind them but they haven’t lost sight of the fact that you’re working with a person and so it just maintains perspective. There’s gonna be times where the perspective is on their gymnastics and the emphasis is on their performance, but there’ll also be times where the the emphasis is on them as a person and developing them. So I think it’s about having a support team, having the logistics all set out and and maintaining perspective I think.

TP: You talked about some of the practical issues that are probably different with young elite athletes. Are young people a different breed or are the issues being dealt with standard at any age?

KR: I mean yes. They have very different constraints on them, we all have constraints and barriers but people under the age of 18 have very different ones. One of those things is choice. Up until kind of 16, 17, 18 they don’t get the option of always making choices. They are obliged and constrained to do certain things such as schooling, and such as exams and qualifications. You know they’re living with parents, there will be rules in the house about particular things, so they don’t get a lot of autonomy in the choices and decisions sometimes, which can be frustrating. We we know that we look at society, you know young people are becoming more aware of the fact that they want to start making decisions about their life and I feel that is happening earlier and that could be because we are encouraging that in school and society for children to take more responsibility for themselves and the choices that they make. But there are still constrains to be children and we are still responsible for them so I think we…it would be naïve to suggest that they are not any different to us and we have to remember that they are children still and there is a lot of development that still has to happen from a physical and cognitive and and social perspective and sometimes when we are specialising people such as in gymnastics, we can often forget, I don’t want to use the word neglect because that could suggest that it’s it’s a conscious decision but we might forget that we need to be developing them socially as well. Whereas maybe when you’re working with adults that socialisation has probably already occurred. So there are certain things that we just need to pay more attention to and I think that’s where I mentioned about perspective; that ok, we are trying to create a champion or a high level performer here. We also need to be aware of their other needs as a human being as well.

TP: How …how do parents fit into this whole thing?

KR: Parents are such a valuable tool. Depending on who you speak to and sometimes they can come across as being potentially a barrier in a gymnast’s performance. But actually if you embrace parents and you embrace them in the process and you engage them and you you communicate with them and explain what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and what your long term vision is for their child because that’s the thing; in the end parents just want the best for their children and they don’t intentionally want to cause stress a lot of the time it’s unintentional. In my experience, a lot of the time it’s just misunderstood, so they will be branded a pushy parent when actually they just, they just want to know what’s going on because that parent is trying to manage maybe not only that one child, maybe they have more than one children, more than one child, and they’re trying to manage their children and they are overseeing everything [unclear] school, they’re overseeing gymnastics, they’re overseeing other activities as well, sometimes they can come across as pushy. And don’t get me wrong, there are parents out there who unfortunately, are maybe making sport too serious and trying to push their children in ways that aren’t helpful but in my experience when you engage parents in the process you explain the long term vision, you, you talk to them about how important they are that you’re really kind of specific in the areas that they should be supporting the child, the gymnast in I think that usually works very well with them. Parents need to be giving emotional support. They need to be giving you know that kind of tangible support , in terms of get them to training, or or get somebody to get them to training. Make sure they’ve got the right equipment and unconditional regard, so regardless of how they do, they need to be there for them. Gymnast don’t, after a long 3, 4 hour training session, they don’t want to then have to de-brief in the car for the next 20 minutes about what they did on each piece of apparatus and how they did and how they did in comparison to somebody else. They want to talk about other things or they just want to you know have a short conversation: “how was gym?” “yeah, it was alright today.” “Oh great”, you know “what what what was good about it?” “Oh, you now, I just got through my programme and I seemed to be making progress.” “That’s fantastic to hear. Well done. What do you want for dinner?” as opposed to this long drawn-out conversation and I know why parents do it, a lot of the times…because of the way gymnast set up for training, parents can’t watch because there aren’t viewing galleries, that’s not what they are built for, they are built for gymnastic training, so parents can sometimes grasping in the dark and so they’re grasping for communication and they do that through the gymnast. But we’ve got to remember that the gymnast is a child so they actually may not be able to communicate all the messages across which is why it’s just so important that coaches can set up some way of giving regular feedback. It doesn’t have to be formal, but some kind of regular feedback for parents.

TP: You’ve worked not just in gymnastics; you’ve worked across a number of other sports as well. Are elite athletes a different breed to the general population?

KR: Yes, definitely [laughter].

TP: How so?

KR: And again, everybody’s opinion is going to differ but I think there are so many different skills that are developed, so many areas of a person that are developed and [unclear] with elite athletes at quite a young age. To become an elite…and I now obviously we have the demographics that start training later in life and transition into elite later but for the majority of elite athletes they’re starting to train when they are a child and they’re being exposed to situations, events and decisions that a lot of adults don’t get exposed to maybe at all in their life or if not, not much later in life. So making decisions and making making difficult decisions and having to make choices and and some people might call them sacrifices but missing an event because you’ve got to train. That that is a kind of decision that for most children growing up they’ll have commitments but it won’t be as as strong a commitment as maybe committing to becoming an elite athlete so they they may not have the same issue of having to say “Do you know what, I can’t go to that party on Friday night because I’ve got to go training on Friday or Saturday morning”. So they’re having to make decisions and understand about decisions and decision-making quite early on in their career. They might also experience some level of what we might call trauma, so you now they experience injury that that set them back or take them out of training or competition for a number of weeks sometimes months. That we might actually describe that as as as trauma in sports and they’re having to then deal with feeling of maybe being able to progress which could be quite frustrating. They might feel that they’re not as connected to their training group and their relationships might suffer and and then then just everything that comes with being an elite athlete the the the fact that you’ve committed to something, it’s your goal but with that means that you are going to have to commit, you are going to have to make sacrifices, you are going to have to push yourself. This isn’t something that you’re obliged to do maybe like your school exams. This is something that you’ve chosen. But from that comes lots of opportunity, great times and personal success and achievement so I think it develops the person much earlier and I think again if they’re supported properly they learn to deal with setbacks much better. They become more confident. They might be better at leading, making decisions, taking a step back when they need to. You know, when the coach is like “Actually, I’m the coach, so we’re gonna do this and this” and being able to accept that. You know there are just so many different things that sports does and I know that as a practitioner. I often talk to coaches and parents and athletes about the fact that this decision you’re having to make or this amount of stress if you like that that you’re deal with right now…there are some people that will go through their life that will never have to experience this. Children that have just finished their GCSEs, and you’ve got…while those GCSEs are going on I know that there are people out there training for European and world championships whilst still trying to do their GCSEs, whilst still trying to get exceptional results in them and that’s a real challenge because there has to be that high level of motivation, that determination, that discipline; the emotional control that is required and then making sure that they’re making the right choices for their body to kind of heal it properly and recover properly. So I think it really does develops the person much more.

TP: I just want to take a moment to ask you about yourself. Your own practice, your own coaching. What stresses you out most? What pulls your motivation down and how do you cope with that?

KR: So I guess I can reflect as a coach and practitioner. What gets my motivation down is when…it’s not that when someone isn’t making progress because ultimately they will progress at the pace that they’re meant to progress at. But it’s often quite when you see someone that is quite frustrated because they’re not progressing. You start to ask yourself, have I done everything that I possibly can here? Have I ticked all the boxes? Is there something that I’m missing? Is there something that I’m not doing? So, when you’re working in a role such as mine coaching, as a practitioner as a consultant, when somebody is unhappy with their progress, you really kind of take that on and you start to think “is it me? “is it something that I’m doing?” “Could I be doing more for you?” And there will be people that will say you can’t take that all on your burden and of course you can’t, you must be rational but because the role is in itself a helping role you..one of the great things about the role is it’s fantastic to see people develop and that’s not necessarily developing their performance but develop as a person. When you’re faced with somebody who’s unhappy, I think that’s the thing that maybe gets me down but I wouldn’t say it gets my motivation down, it just gets me down and makes me kind of question, you know, if I’m doing everything that I can. In terms of my motivation, it’s when I’ve got too much going on [laughter]. When when you take on too much. Which is, which is…

TP: Do you do that regularly?

KR: Oh yes, yes definitely and most people that know me will be nodding and laughing now. I think it’s because it’s such a reactive role, especially as a as a practitioner. You could take on a client and then you could only hear from them once every couple of months and then suddenly they wanna speak to you every couple of weeks and then you’re trying to be quite reactive and balance your workload. You just can’t predict what’s going to happen, you know sports is an unpredictable beast. So I think it the… trying to stay on top of things and still be effective and that’s when I think my motivation decreases when I feel that I’m not being effective and I’ve got a lot going on but all it takes is a swift word with myself and a…a…a couple of hours or a day to write the list, get back on track with things and and and then you kind of get that…that…that energy again to get out and do what you do, but yeah it’s managing workload in a role such as a mine is a difficult one and I’m sure that there are lots of people out there that would agree.

TP: So everybody that I’m talking to I’m asking them to talk about what success or what performance is to them personally. How do you define success for yourself?

KR: [laughter] I mean I laugh because it’s one of my favourite topics to talk about with people, is what is success and from doing that it’s made me reflect a lot on what is success to me. It’s definitely changed Tammy over over the years. If you asked me when I was 19, 20, 21 what success was it would be winning hands down and I can remember how that was to win really drove me to train hard and put in a lot of effort and make difficult choices. You know I was at university and training and they gym I was training was an hour away and I used to do that 6 days a week whilst still doing my undergraduate degree. I…I did not go to a lot of the nights out etc. because I was training, but that was okay because I had a reason for it. I knew that if I wanted to win or come as close to winning as I could that I would have to…I would have to make those choices. I would have to put in effort. The fact that I then made those choices, if I didn’t train hard then I’d be really angry with myself because it would be like well what was the point then. Why are you going to make that choice, go, miss out on something and then not make it worthwhile and so it gave me motivation. It did make me quite hard on myself. You know it did, it did put a lot of pressure on things and when things weren’t going well it would make me frustrated but I had a fantastic coach who is now a very good friend of mine and she was….she was very interested in psychology and she was very level-headed and she kept perspective and she knew what I wanted to achieve and she wanted to achieve it for me as much as I did. But she was very good at keeping me grounded and and preparing me psychologically and giving me that emotional control and support that I needed.

TP: So that was you then, what about you now?

KR: So now, I’m completely different I think, in terms of now for me success is measured in such a different way in what I do now so if…if…if an athlete that I work with wins I can’t take that as a success for me because I…I appreciate that there are so many things that make that win ultimately the person, the gymnast themselves and it’s part of being a team. So I think success for me is about feeling effective in that if I feel that I’m doing what I can and I feel that my clients…I can see more elements of progression be that as a person or in their performance, I think that is success to me. And if people are happy, people interact with me and they feel better for that…in comparison to when they started that is success and I think that if anybody ever describes me as inspirational that to me is is success. I want to be somebody that…just like I’ve done there when I reminisced about my coachI want to leave an impact on people, a positive impact so that they can say “Do you know what? That person helped me or that person inspired me”, and and that to me is success.

TP: Just gonna end up with some quick fire questions.

KR: Okay.

TP: What did you eat for breakfast?

KR: A protein yoghurt.

TP: Favourite piece of kit?

KR: My [unclear]

TP: Sporting hero?

KR: Anthony Joshua.

TP: Why?

KR: Because I like how humble he’s been and he comes from a place…he comes from humble beginnings and he’s remained humble throughout and that’s not to say that he’s worked harder than anyone else but I think he pays tribute to the fact that he’s had a team that got him there and and he feels part of the team and I think it’s that perspective and it’s that level of humility that he has and how humble he is is nice to see.

TP: Most useless piece of advice you’ve been given or given to somebody else?

KR: So I remember when I was about 24 somebody told me to not be so passionate.

TP: Right.

KR: And I’m so pleased that I ignored them.

TP: Sounds like good advice to ignore them.

KR: Yeah [laughter].

TP: Greatest passion outside of sport.

KR: Ooh, spending time with family and friends. Definitely.

TP: And last one, best performance enhancer.

KR: Oooh, okay. So I’m gonna sound like a right geek now but being mindful. Being able to be in the moment is my best performance enhancer.

TP: Brilliant. Thank you very much Katie, it’s been fantastic talking to you.

KR: Thank you very much.

[music]

TP: Thanks for listening. You can follow the conversation on Twitter, Facebook and also don’t forget to subscribe online to a question of performance.com

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Ep 4. Ben Richens – GB powerlifting coach on building self-belief

15th November 2016 by tammyparlour Leave a Comment

In episode 4, coach Ben Richens talks about what it takes to build self-belief, his experience coaching at the Invictus Games, and the importance of an individualised training plan.

Ben Richens is a strength & conditioning coach who has athletes at European, Commonwealth, World Championship and Paralympic games level. His athletes span a wide range of sports including: men’s rugby (international 7’s), GB Wheelchair Basketball, Paralympic Powerlifting, Sailing, Squash, MMA, Ironman and much more.

Visit Ben’s website here.

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TX: 15.11.16 – Ep 4. Ben Richens – GB powerlifting coach on building self-belief

HOST: TAMMY PARLOUR

[Music]

So I’m here with Ben Riches, Ben is a strength and conditioning coach who has athletes at European, Commonwealth, World Championship and Paralympic Games level. His athletes span a wide range of sports including Men’s International Rugby, GB Wheelchair Basketball, Paralympic Powering Lifting, sailing, squash, M&A, Iron Man and much much more. Ben’s also been my strength and conditioning coach for the past five years and he’s moving me into competing in powerlifting. Ben thanks for joining us today after a session [laughs] of putting me through my paces! How would you describe what you do?

BR: At heart, I’m a strength and conditioning coach, but recently I’ve got quite into powerlifting – I compete myself, and I’ve got a number of athletes who do as well and I work quite closely with St Mary’s University and I’m Head Coach at the St Mary’s Strength, Powerlifting and Weightlifting Club.

TP: What do you enjoy about working with athletes, what do you get the most buzz from?

BR: It’s the interaction, definitely. I find it very hard to work with somebody I don’t think we’re on the same page as, but its progress and that’s the main thing making that person fulfil their potential whatever that is, whatever level that is.

TP: When you say you’ve got someone who’s working on a different page, what do you mean?

BR: It’s mainly that point of trust hasn’t developed. So you can sometimes quite quickly realise if that person’s asking certain questions because they want to develop and get better, and that’s perfect and that’s how you develop understanding progression; or that person’s asking you questions because they don’t trust what you’re doing, so there are two different things.

TP: Yeah. I’ve been talking to a number of elite athletes recently and the athletes that I’ve spoken to say that winning and success is all about belief, how do you work with athletes to build that belief to make them think that they can do what they want to do? Or do you?

BR: [Laughs] I think mainly, first of all, it comes from an understanding of what it takes to where they want to get to? So maybe the sacrifices, the time that they put in and what that person’s willing to do. Say, for example, if I worked with an athlete who wants to be world champion, we have to have a sit down and look at what they’re willing to do to become a world champion. So, for example, if they’ve got a busy family and they can only train once a week and they’re coming in quite late to the sport say, that sort of goal of becoming a world champion is not maybe not that realistic so we then have to temper expectations and go, ‘That might not realistic given what you’re going to give, but this is realistic to compete at British level’ or whatever it is, and it’s knowing the sport and knowing what they want to do to see what they can put in and what they can get back I think that’s the main thing.

TP: From a personal perspective, you’ve been my strength and conditioning coach for about five years. I know that when I’m lifting with you I can lift more, I know that I trust you totally and we’ve been to one competition so far and I lifted more in that competition than I ever have done before, and I just believed that whatever you told me to go and lift that I could lift it.

BR: Mmm.

TP: I don’t know, where does that come from?

BR: So like you touched on before its trust and that you absolutely believe the steps that you and your coach are taking are the right ones, and that’s often broken down into smaller steps. So, I thought you were going to be quite good at it, and you are. It’s almost having the coach or the person who is there having the confidence to let that person really do it? So it’s making smaller steps and then comparing to like what we did together was making smaller steps you lifted, you squatted, you dead-lifted, and then we make comparisons. So you’ve just dead-lifted X amount, that’s quite competitive for your age and your weight class, I think you could compete at a regional level/British level/English level whatever it maybe, so it’s making those comparisons of where that person is right now to the other standards around them and that creates confidence and belief as well.

TP: When does it go wrong? Do you have athletes that sort of come in and, I don’t know, they’ve been lifting zero and suddenly they want to lift 600?

BR: I think the main thing when it goes wrong is it’s mainly when expectations aren’t met. So, for example, again it’s like the landscape over the last few years has changed quite a lot in terms of social media and in terms of people putting up a post of what they’re doing and what they’re lifting, how fast they’re running, whatever it maybe, and people are just seeing those individual single posts but not seeing all the years of hard work that have gone on behind it, and just going, ‘Oh that person’s done that, okay I…’ so their expectations of what’s achievable without hard work are often quite skewed? And it does, to become good at a British level, at a European or world level it takes years of hard work. So, can you get yourself in an environment where you trust the process, because progress isn’t a linear thing, we’re going to have ups and downs and everything like that, so you have to be able to trust the process that even when you have a period of stagnation or you go down a little bit for example, you’re not running very fast, you’re not throwing as far, you’ve still got that potential to fulfil, so that’s the main thing and it’s not going to happen overnight, which I think sometimes people can caught up in social media of that. ‘Okay, I’ve seen this awesome montage on YouTube’ [laughs] or this thing happening, but it takes a lot of hard work to get there, and are people willing to put that hard work in to get that result?

TP: You’ve – on a slightly different tack – you’ve been involved in the Invictus Games, is it two years now?

BR: Yeah, 2014 and this year 2016.

TP: Yes, so that must be quite an experience, can you talk to me a little bit about how some of the highs and lows of working with Invictus?

BR: [Laughs] It’s, to be honest, it is probably the highlight of my career working with Invictus Games. I was quite lucky to be brought on early on, the first time it was done in London and then the second time this year in Orlando.

TP: Just, I suppose I want to say for the listeners, the Invictus is a Games for injured servicemen and women.

BR: Yeah, and it covers rarely indifferent types of injury, so unseen wounds, you know PTSD and all those other things. And also physical wounds, so people who’ve been in Afghanistan and been blown up and lost a limb, whatever it maybe; and often both as well so it’s not just separate you have mental or physical, it’s often both as well. So working with a bunch of people who have overcome massive massive things also puts a lot of things in your life in your own perspective, but it’s also again it’s the journey before the Games with these guys, the training camps that they’ve been on, how strong they’ve got, particularly with Orlando. So we did a good run-up of training camps, so you get to know everybody and you get to know lots of little bits about them and what they’ve overcome, if they open up and talk about some stuff it’s really…it’s really motivating actually what the human spirit can overcome and do, whatever you’ve come across. But that’s the main thing that these guys started a process and they followed it through to the Games and for me Orlando was awesome, awesomely organised, we had some great results. GB did really really well and lots of medals, but I think as one of the competitors said it’s the process that they go through that changes their lives, So I think that one of the guy’s said, “You can actually when we’re out there you can see some of these guys’ lives actually changing in front of you,’ it’s that powerful, sport is that powerful.

TP: So developing that belief that I can?

BR: Yeah. And even that tagline, ‘I am,’ so that I am master of my fate, so they are control and they can control through sport.

TP: Mmm. You’ve worked with individuals and teams, is there a difference to working with teams?

BR: Yeah, there is. I like working with both, like the team aspect is you definitely can breed a particular environment, which sometimes can be good [laughs] and sometimes can be bad, but that sort of team spirit and when somebody does have a bad day the other person, you’ve got different personalities in the team can bring them up, bring different people through different things, so that sort of team ethos and environment is a very very powerful thing. So for coaches and other players or whoever it maybe, that’s a really addictive thing as well to work together in a team. It’s difficult when you’re in an individual sport it’s really difficult because often you’re performing on your own, you’re the only person up there.

TP: And against your team mates?

BR: Yeah and even in powerlifting, so if we go back to St Mary’s, the sort of environment that me and the guys who work there try to create is like a team, so it’s an individual sport and you’re the only one on the platform, but we try to create that environment where everybody’s helping supporting and working together, it’s not just a bunch of individuals who train in the gym together it’s we need to create that team cohesion.

TP: Do you have people who are just so individual and they just don’t want to be part of it?

BR: I think everybody wants to belong at some level.

TP: Mmm.

BR: You might have personality clashes that’s I think where it is, and it’s the same thing even in Invictus there were personality clashes of course, but at the end of it, I think everybody has sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves, and it’s enjoyable to be part of that, it’s enjoyable to be part of a team that are doing well.

TP: You’ve worked with GB Powerlifting, what do you think they need to do to excel in Tokyo?

BR: Like in Rio the guys did a really job, so Mickey, Ali, Natalie, Zoe and so Zoe got a bronze, Ali got a silver – fantastic results. On a fundamental level, we need to get more people into the sport basically or people competing. And from there where you get more people who can perform at a high level, so we’re quite lucky right now to have a good population and training group of injured service people who’ve come from the Invictus Games and who are training at Tedworth House under Strength and Conditioning JP there of the Help the Heroes team. And I think we’ll gradually see the fruits of this hopefully in the Commonwealth in the Gold Coast in two years in 2018 and then in Tokyo, but with any sport if you have a big grassroots participation you’re going to get a bigger base of the pyramid…

TP: And more people coming through the…?

BR: Exactly the higher the pyramid that it will filter though. So, basically, that’s the main thing really, get more people participating and knowing about sport.

TP: And talking about getting more people participating, you have two young children [laughs]?

BR: Yeah, I do.

TP: You’ve got a daughter who is three is she?

BR: Mmhm.

TP: Yes, and a son who hasn’t yet had his first birthday?

BR: Yeah.

TP: Are you keen for them to get involved in sport and which sports would you like to see them doing?

BR: [Laughs] I had this conversation a while ago when my first daughter was born, and as a strength and conditioning coach one of the temptations is to draw out a long term athlete development plan, so…

TP: [Laughs].

BR: …when they’re six years old they will do this, and when they’re eight years old they’re going to gymnastics which will then carry through to rugby, and then that there will be in automatically for and this and this. It’s that sort of joke with some of the guys I was on the course with that her whole future is going to be mapped out and what sport she’s going to play. But then when you have kids you learn [laughs] it’s not that easy, like I was teaching her trying to clean and jerk yesterday actually with a wooden stick, and she did like two reps and then she just started spinning the stick around hitting things off the table and everything like that. The cute coaching cues that you use with some people [laughs] they just don’t…

TP: It’s just not going to work with a three year old [laughs].

BR: No they don’t, they don’t. So [laughs] the main thing is that she enjoys what she does in whatever sport that might be. I have in my mind [laughs] that athletically doing gymnastics, doing a combat sport…contact sport like rugby things like that they give her a good foundation of movement skills and strength and power and then that can transfer to whatever she wants to do. But in my heart – yeah, I do want her to be powerlifter.

[Laughter]

TP: So as someone who worked with people who are wanting to perform to their best, what does performance mean to you?

BR: Again it goes back to the individual about what they’re willing to put in, and what they’re happy to do. So, for example, my point of view powerlifting wise, I came into it quite old, I know because I’ve got a family, work, etc, I’m never going to be a world champion powerlifter because the gap between what I’m doing lifting right now and what world champions are going to do is miles apart. But, I love whether it’s a master level lifter, whatever, I’d love to compete for my country and maybe even get to the European championships or whenever, and just have that experience of stepping on a stage to represent the country, I think that’s an awesome thing.

So performance is to be is quite individual. You might get somebody who comes into the gym – for example, I’ve got a cerebral palsy athlete I train, fantastic runner, to him performance was the ability, because he’s left side affected so cerebral palsy affects his left arm and left leg, to him performance was I want to be able to do a pull-up without any assistance, so with that left arm it’s really quite hard both in range and in strength to pull-up equally. We got there and he’s got the ability now to say to his mates, or whoever it is or just get in the gym and go, ‘I can perform eight strict pull-ups,’ to him that’s a very powerful thing in confidence and belief wise, it’s got nothing to do with his running, it won’t make him a better runner, but the feedback so the performance of that pull-up or the series of pull-ups is individual to him. So sometimes

TP: Sounds like something about progress as well?

BR: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

TP: Feels that one’s always learning and keeping moving forward and progressing, mmm.

BR: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the biggest thing, if you keep on progressing as a human being, as an athlete, whatever it is, that can give you great drive, great happiness. And one of the most frustrating things is if you hit a stagnant patch or even decrease, so performance is – yeah, can you perform better, whenever that maybe to the individual.

TP: Well it’s been brilliant talking to you, Ben. I just want to round up with some quick fire questions.

BR: Cool.

TP: What did you eat for breakfast?

BR: [laughs] I literally had a cup of tea, to be honest, this morning because I was…

TP: That’s it?

BR: Yeah [laughs].

TP: Favourite piece of kit?

BR: Barbell.

TP: Sporting hero?

BR: I’ll take you back to my childhood, Stuart Pearce, England.

TP: Why?

BR: Passion, he was a left back player for England many times for Nottingham Forest Defender, pure passion for it. He came into the sport late as well, so he shouldn’t have been where he was, I think he came into the sport at 22 or 23 playing non-league before that, but the passion that he showed playing for his country, especially in Euro ’95 fantastic, yeah.

TP: Most useless piece of advice you have been given or given to someone else?

BR: I’ve been given was change of sport.

TP: What – change the sport?

BR: Change of sport that I’m doing. It’s like why? If somebody’s got a passion for something…

TP: Yes?

BR: …you telling them to change it that’s the most useless thing that you can do, like why?

TP: It’s not helpful.

BR: Not helpful at all.

TP: Greatest passion outside of sport?

BR: Kids and family.

TP: Best performance enhancer?

BR: [Laughs] In training wise to individualise a training schedule to what you’ve got going on outside of life. You can have the best training schedule whatever it is the world, but if you’re coming into that on the wrong day or tired or whatever it is, it doesn’t individually…if it isn’t individually specific to you then it’s useless.

TP: Mmm, that’s brilliant. Well thank you very much Ben for talking today, I really appreciate.

BR: You’re welcome. Thank you.

[Music]

TP: Thanks for listening. You can follow the conversation on Twitter, Facebook and also don’t forget to subscribe online to aquestionofperformance.com.

[Music]

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